As WND reported in 2004, the U.S. declared the rape, pillaging and slaughter of blacks in western Sudan by the Islamist Khartoum regime and its Arab militia allies genocide. The U.N. has described it as the world’s worst current humanitarian crisis, with estimates of over 200,000 dead and more than 2.1 million displaced in four years.

In his column, Ban said U.N. statistics showed rainfall declined some 40 percent over the past two decades, as a rise in Indian Ocean temperatures disrupted monsoons.

“This suggests that the drying of sub-Saharan Africa derives, to some degree, from man-made global warming,” the South Korean diplomat wrote.

“It is no accident that the violence in Darfur erupted during the drought,” Ban wrote.

Ban explained that when Darfur’s land was rich, black farmers welcomed Arab herders and shared their water. With the drought, however, farmers fenced in their land to prevent overgrazing.

“For the first time in memory, there was no longer enough food and water for all,” he wrote. “Fighting broke out.”

A U.N. peacekeeping force could stop the fighting, “but what to do about the essential dilemma: the fact that there’s no longer enough good land to go around?”